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Windows Incompatibilities Frustrate D.C. Schools
capouch writes "The Washington Post reports that school administrators for the DC public school system are having an awful time getting their new administrative software to work properly." From the article: "'In my experience, the combination of an Oracle database, Windows operating system, Unix hardware and an Apache webserver is a bad combination,' Barlow wrote in the memo to Thomas M. Brady, the school system's chief business operations officer. 'In fact, through our research the last few days, we have found an advisory on the Apache website that states, 'Please note that at this time, Windows support is entirely experimental and is recommended only for experienced users.' The Apache Group does not guarantee that the software will work as documented or even at all...Barlow said officials plan to replace Windows with a different operating system."
...for not properly researching what they were going to use. A little time before can save a lot of time after.
"Unix hardware"?
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING
The experimental warning applied to older 1.3.x versions and systems running Windows 9x/Me.
I wonder if they will choose Linux or OS X. These seem the likely replacement choices. With linux they could use existing hardware, but damn are those Xserves sexy.
Obviously, they should be using Linux hardware.
liqbase
A different operating system that is NOT Windows...?
How long until Microsoft swoops in with salesmen and faulty TCO numbers to convince this county's school board to go all-MS?
After all, there wouldn't be these problems if the schools were using Windows XP workstations accessing MS-SQL servers running alongside Windows Server 2003 Enterprise IIS webservers. Right?
Because we all know it's cheaper that way, right? Right?
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
In my experience it is more often bad management that causes problems, regardless of the underlying technology (good or bad).
"'Please note that at this time, Windows support is entirely experimental and is recommended only for experienced users.' "
Ok...how is this a Windows issue?
Apache is not a plug and play webserver like IIS...or even other repackaged versions of Apache (which go out their way not to show they are really Apache).
Apache is not a webserver for anyone but experienced users -- at least on the administration side. Once you have it set up, its dead simple to use.
This is also one of the reasons on a lot of Windows installs, I simply use IIS and install PHP as it does everything I need for those installs. Its not like there is a big need for ModRewrite or other modules most of the time.
(note: on my own personal site, I run nothing but Apache -- I know how to configure it but it was a long and involved process to learn the ins and outs of it -- like the totally f'd up way virtual domains need to be configured -- something even veterans note is just wrong).
Posted anonymously because I know a slam to Apache generally isn't welcomed here!
UNIX hardware, Windows OS, Apache, and Oracle a bad combination?
No doubt they are trying to run Windows Server 2003 on a Sunfire cluster with Oracle and Apache running on it.
No wonder they are running into trouble....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Well, that's obviously their problem. They've melded their OS and HW together in some freaky Doctor Moreau experiment. Either that, or their IT guys suck. Apache works fine on Windows, if that's what you want to do.
as more people feel the consequences of Microsoft's lock-in policies. It is becoming apparent to more and more people that when one uses any Microsoft system or app, Microsoft controls your information and your IT decisions.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Inexperienced IT professionals find it frustrating setting up systems they have never set up before...
Dog Bites Man...
And the Sun will probably come up tomorrow... God willing.
Stayed tuned for more "News for Nerds... Stuff that matters."
I sure the hell hope you are right! But, I think the only way that will ever happen is if schools start using OSX and linux a lot more. The biggest reason people use windows is because they are used to it, and getting people get used to the alternatives will really help.
Of course the fact that almost all PC's come with Windows installed doesn't help the problem either. At least the other OS's now have passable support for most hardware as well as a somewhat competitive application library now.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Meria J. Carstarphen, the chief accountability officer, said that D.C. STARS has great potential and that some of the glitches are attributable to long-standing problems with the city's technology infrastructure.
I think that tells you something about the structure of the DC school district. A chief accountability officer? WTF? Is this because the other O-level folks don't have to practice accountability, or is it because they're simply used to having to defend themselves against charges of incompetence?
They've frequently had problems getting the school year to start on time. Back when I lived in DC, it was because of asbestos in the buildings, but there have been other reasons.
The city government as a whole has been a joke for as long as anyone can remember, so it's probably unfair to blame the school district alone. But somehow this late discovery that Apache really doesn't work best with Windows doesn't surprise me, given the source.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
How much time and money did they spend on a system without, apparently, having first determined if the various bits would play nicely together? How did they manage to get to the point of going live without testing? Why did the CIO discover fundamental issues only after system failures? Just who are these folks and why do they still have jobs?
Schools are always griping about how they are underfunded, well maybe if you didn't spend tens of thousands JUST on MS-Office site licenses alone, never mind Windows OS, you could be saving a bundle!
The schools are run by the boards of education, so the people in charge there need to hear and understand the open source message. Stop grovelling at the feet of Microsoft already!
Meh.
Ok,
they are running apache on windows I guess then? And that's the problem? Why are they running windows on "Unix Hardware"? What is "Unix hardware"? I can only assume they mean a Sun box? I didn't know Windows had a sparc version! I bet that's really awesome!
Anyway, from reading the article I get the impression that neither the interviewer nor the people interviewed have enough technical background to describe the problems accurately, much less fix them. The people interviewed are all managers who probably don't know the difference between c++ and VB, couldn't tell you what an OS actually is, or understand the difference between hardware and software (apparently).
In short, the story is that some managers who don't understand technology and were trying to deploy an apparently advanced web service for an entire school district never bothered to read the documentation of the software they were deploying, and then ran into trouble... I guess that's interesting, or news, or something..
Apache has only limited support for Windows, but still, Apache is a bitch to configure for any platform. And ORACLE? Look, Oracle is a problem in itself. But adding Apache, Windows, UNIX hardware, and then expecting a proprietary software solution (D.C. Stars) to perform is not Windows fault.
Windows is a lot of things. It is slow, it is insecure, but it cannot be blamed for errors in an untested software solution running on a proprietary DB solution with a webserver that does not support the Windows platform.
*nix zealots - thats the truth. I use Ubuntu at home, but i can appreciate a falllacy when I see one.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
I can tell you that the computer system is the least of their problems.
My Weblog
>In the past week, a number of students found mistakes in their class schedules because of glitches in the computer system, which is called D.C. STARS and is designed to handle attendance, grading and the calculation of graduation and dropout rates, among other functions. School officials said at the time that the problem affected about 5 percent of secondary students.
This looks more like a problem with bad software than with the underlying operating system. The article doesn't list any actual problem they have with Windows.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Windows is the best operating system of choice for every situation. But provide actual facts as to the problems. "Underlying infrastructure" is too abstract to be of any use to anyone.
As for Apache on Windows... it works fine for me. I can't provide technological sources to disprove what the article says but my personal experiences with it have always been fine.
In my experience, the combination of an Oracle database, Windows operating system, Unix hardware and an Apache webserver is a bad combination
Good job getting windows to work on "Unix Hardware", I never thought that was possible.
In fact, through our research the last few days, we have found an advisory on the Apache website that states, 'Please note that at this time, Windows support is entirely experimental and is recommended only for experienced users.' The Apache Group does not guarantee that the software will work as documented or even at all.
Research first, then act. Dumbass.
Brady and Barlow said yesterday that employees at some schools were experiencing slowness with the system. But they denied that any school had been unable to use the system for a prolonged period.
That can be from any number of problems. Heavy loads are 1st, but that could stem from incompetence which could explain this whole problem.
Barlow said officials plan to replace Windows with a different operating system.
Well if you're "running" it on "Unix Hardware", then switching won't help since nobody knows what is going on anyway.
"The system has been slow the last couple of days; it's been off and on," Tarason said.
That happens with all systems, no matter what platform if you don't have the right people managing it. (Dupe comment too).
"Instead of the technology helping, it could be a hindrance," Roy said.
Technology is only a tool. I like to think of it as a simple filter or mathematical equation in which if you put crap in, crap will come out. It's not a magic box that makes everything right even if monkeys are pushing the buttons.
Sorry if this came off like a flame, but the article lacks any real information.
Windows is ALWAYS the problem.
But why would you go all windows with the OS if you didn't intend on using IIS?
Why does using Windows necessitate IIS? If Windows and Apache is a problem, please don't tell my systems. My Windows/Apache/SOAP CGI/MSSQL have been running flawlessly for years. I'd hate to think they're incompatible.
From my experience, Apache's 'experimental' is like Google's 'beta'.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
I've had a lot of experience (years) of running Apache on Windows, and it has been very stable for me, to the point that I can't remember a single crash in all the time that I was using it. That said, I'm pretty sure the gist of what they're saying is that Apache is most stable in a Linux / Unix-style environment, as that's what it's always been built for.
Besides, you shouldn't run a production web server on Windows unless you have a real need for it (ASP.Net comes to mind, and even then there are ways to run that in a Unix-style environment).
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Given that the problem here is caused by Apache not functioning properly on Windows, shouldn't the headline be "Apache Incompatibilities Frustrate D.C. Schools?" Hell, given that the Apache programmers have been always made it abundantly clear that Apache does not work right on Windows, the title should really be "Idiotic choices by systems engineers frustrate D.C. schools?"
It's pretty pathetic that leading Linux evangelists have to go this far to come up with an anti-Windows story, but it should make Microsoft feel better that they do.
They had to put Windows up there to make it a valid Slashdot article. It wouldn't have been posted otherwise.
Leave it to Slashdot to take an article that shows complete incompetency on the part of the journalist and those interviewed, and make it a problem about Windows.
-David
The problem is when standards are violated, which most often is a Windows problem. Most of the problems with Samba (and Samba-NG) are caused by Microsoft, for example. Microsoft's current tiff with the EU, over not wanting to release network protocols to Open Source projects, isn't helping Microsoft's case any.
However, not all problems are due to Microsoft. The administration is, as has been noted by others, often to blame. Roxen, a rival Open Source webserver that supported SSL before Apache, is available for Windows 2000/XP. Apache 2.0.x has often been criticised for problems (causing many to stick with the 1.x branch) so if it's a problem with 2.0 which could be avoided with 1.x then they've only themselves to blame.
(And if they're using the Apache 2.1 tree for a production system, they're idiots.)
So there are solutions, you just need to look for them. Going with all-Windows, however, would not be one of them, unless you're working with a uniform Windows release, not just Windows. NEVER mix NT domains with Windows 200x domains, for example.
Also, because of architectural differences, drivers available for the XP core won't necessarily have counterparts in the 200x core. They may, but you cannot assume that. I believe it's XP that has IPv6 support, 2000 doesn't. That's just one example. The problem will likely worsen with Vista, particularly for graphics, as they've totally redesigned how graphics work. (Off-loading is a GOOD thing, but Microsoft has stated it doesn't document internal APIs, so compatibility isn't guaranteed.)
High-level software faces similar problems, where the API it is based on has been broken, so applications may or may not run correctly on different versions of Windows. DirectX software often faces this problem, as DirectX is not evenly maintained across code bases.
I would also avoid
All-*nix solutions are, as I've said, often better but they still have their problems. Binary-only software should work just fine on any *nix platform, because you can always ship the necessary libraries (and install whatever is not already there locally, using LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to the local version), or you can statically compile.
In practice, *nix programmers are just as liable to take shortcuts that damage compatibility or which are dubious practices. It is unclear who has done so, in the arguments beween Hans Reiser and the other Linux kernel developers, but I can guarantee a fully-functional Reiser4 would be in the kernel by now if everyone was following good practices.
DSM (Distributed Shared Memory) should be independent of how processes are shared, but OpenMOSIX' DSM is unlikely to be folded into the main kernel any time soon.
Applications are no better - you can't guarantee Oracle or DB/2 running on Linux platforms they weren't compiled for, even though (as I've said - and was saying when Oracle first mooted a Linux port!) such incompatibilities are optional and the choice of the developer(s) involved.
It is almost impossible to design a system that prevents crappy programming (by later system developers or by application developers), and where attempts to do this HAVE been made, nobody wants to use the systems.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The configuration is time-consuming and error-prone
What the fuck are you talking about? The configuration is the same as it is under Unix.
The PHP-monkeys make sure the Windows-binaries are released at the same time that the source is released, to make their Windows-audience feel like they are worth something.
MySQL is just a bad database.
It's can be a real problem to set up Apache on Windows.
Actually, with the current installer, installing Apache on Windows is brain dead easy. Getting MySQL (4.1) running under windows isn't rocket science, but getting PHP (5) to talk to MySQL in that environment is a pain the first time or two.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
You know what I see when I scroll through the comments to this article?
Some people pointing out that this is essentially not a Windows problem but a management/sysadmin/apache problem, and some others saying "look at all the Linux zealots!"
Linux zealots? Where?
Sure, the story poster may not have seen clearly what was going on, but then again, the article was written by the ignorant interviewing the ignorant, so who can blame them for having the wrong opinion.
I'm sick and tired of people trolling on the biases of the Slashdot crowd, only to have the highest moderated posts betray the fact that they are really just speaking of their own biases.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Precisely why you shouldn't be installing a web server. If you don't even know the name of the keys, please keep your badly configured servers off the internet.
That said, don't run Word to edit text files. I just opened Wordpad and entered the number "1" as the text. No numbers, no carriage returns. Just the number one. 158 bytes. The following is the text in the file I saved:
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl {\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Arial;}}
{\*\generator Msftedit 5.41.15.1507;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\f0\fs20 1\par
}
Shame on Apache for not compensating for this gross inefficiency in their config parser.
'Slashdot headlines frustrate readers'
I have 3 words for this article:
WAKE UP EDITORS.
It clearly states Windows isn't at fault, so WHY must you put this 'Windows causes all problems, no matter what the article REALLY says' spin on everything AS OFTEN as you can? Grow up, and get some journalistic integrity.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
They did exactly the right thing.
You don't choose an OS and then choose your main-line applications.
You choose the applications you need to run, in order to get whatever job you need done, and then you choose an operating system based on those applications.
In this case, they want or need Apache as a web server. That's a fine, defensible choice. It's popular. It's pretty easy to find support on it, even without a contract. Most sysadmins are familiar with it. It has a good track record. Etc.
They also want Oracle -- exactly why they'd want to do this I'm not sure, but they do. Fine.
Based on that, they should review their choice of an operating system. And from that, they should determine their hardware requirements. Absent of a lot of legacy applications or something which predetermine the OS and hardware decision, there isn't any reason why a person should pick a OS before they choose their software. That's just backwards.
Basically, it sounds like someone just was slightly lazy and didn't want to make the tough call and tell their bosses that they needed a new operating system for their server, and now they're paying the price. Perhaps that's a result of their institutional culture, I don't know. But it sounds like they finally understood that they went the wrong way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I have Apache 2, PHP5, PostgreSQL and mod_ssl all running happily on my desktop, wasn't really any harder than getting it running on *nix except for the ssl part.
It takes two to tango. Contractors cause more problems than their government clients.
In a former life I was a government employee deeply involved in bringing several IT systems online, from writing requirements to staff training to getting rid of something we didn't like.
Corruption of government employees was not an issue. Lack of research by government wasn't an issue.
The biggest single problem I saw was the creation of inadequate requirement specs. I saw this happen over and over for two reasons: 1) Governmenr employees lacked the technological backgrounded needed to express their needs in terms that their IT contractors could understand; 2) Contractors, especially those hired to help write the requirements, lacked awareness of their clients business needs and processes.
So, in effect, the government knew what it wanted to do but not how to translate that into a requirements doc, and the contractors did not know very much, and did not want to know very much, about the work done by their client. As a result contractors threw assorted pieces of their IT catalog against business processes they only vaguely understood.
I don't know how it works in DC, but in my environment, it would have been the contractor's responsibility to check the Apache website for that caveat about the Windows version. That's what they're paid to do.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Here's the real incompatibility: Combining Unix, Apache, Oracle, Windows, *AND* the DC School System.
I'm not a system admin, Oracle expert, or network guru, and I've gotten his combination up and running many times. Okay, it isn't painless and I find it a bit frustrating, but then again, setting this stuff up isn't technically my job.
Now, the DC school system is something else. They couldn't get two tin cans and a piece of string to network together. Compared to the DC government bureaucracy, the Somalian National Government is more organized and better run.
Quite true. But once you've done it at least once and distilled the actual need-to-do tasks from the process, it's about a 15-minute job.
;c:\php (or php5, if you named it that way).
1) Install Apache with the MSI installer. Do not reboot (it doesn't ask, so no problem).
2) Install PHP from the ZIP archive. Just unzip it to C:\PHP (or C:\PHP5 for even less config editing)
3) Install MySQL with the MSI installer. DO NOT REBOOT (yet).
4) Run through the MySQL Config Wizard when asked (at the end of the install).
5) Set the DocumentRoot and any VirtualHosts you want in the Apache config. It works just like other platforms.
6) Copy and rename the php.ini-recommended file to just php.ini. Set the doc_root and extension_root (extension root should be "./ext") settings, and uncomment (remove the semicolon) "extension=php_mysql.dll" and uncomment or add (if it's not there) "extension=php_mysqli.dll".
7) Find the PHP install.txt file. Find your system/HTTP server/version combination and add the lines they say to the end of the Apache config. There should be 2 or 3 lines. A copy/paste will suffice.
8) Right-click My Computer, click Properties, click the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables... Now, on the bottom half of the dialog box are the environment variables for everyone (your user-specific ones are at the top). Find the one called "PATH" (not case sensitive, but is usually all upper-case) and add
9) Reboot. The environment variables aren't updated unless you reboot.
It's not a walk in the park, but after the first time and figuring out just where stuff is, it's pretty easy for a techie. Another note: I added stuff about VirtualHosts in Apache above, but didn't mention that you'll need to set up DNS entries or mess with your hosts file to get those to work. You can just skip the VirtualHosts if you don't know how to configure them. The rest of it will still work.
WAPO/LAPO.
Windows|Linux Apache PHP/PERL ***ODBC***
Please.
I had to set up a relatively identical testing site to my production site, using two databases, postgres and mysql, and soon postgres/mysql AND Oracle.
Getting WAMP to work with postgres was nearly impossible without a properly configured cygwin environment (even with), and getting WAMP to work with postgres AND ODBC was impossible.
I had to resort to a FC2 install on a VMware Pro setup to get it working. This isn't a problem on my Linux hosts. But I'm thoroughly sick of all these idiots building PHP/Perl tools only for MySQL. ODBC was built for a reason, why can't we use it?
<sigh>
Granted ODBC isn't exactly the perfect standard, but dammit, it's close enough for 99% of the projects out there currently.
You missed an important step. Under Windows I've always had to set old-passwords in MySQL's INI file to get it to work with PHP. And you should do it before you set your root password in MySQL. I always wait just long enough between installs to forget that.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
Went looking for more info on this system.
Here's http://dcstars.k12.dc.us:50825/ the home page.
Here http://www.aalsolutions.com/7_esis/tech.asp is the technical specs of the eSIS system from the company who developed it, AAL.
As you can see, supposedly it works with everything - Windows, Mac, UNIX, whatever. A three-tier system.
I got sidetracked in my search because I found a document that referenced IBM, so I thought they developed it. Nope - their Student Information Practice consultants were apparently contracted for implementation assistance only.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It is apparent you have no real-life experience daling with or managing relations between large organizations and large contractors.
Communication difficulties are not equivalent to learning disabilities. If that is what your shcool teaches, perhaps you ought to leave it.
In any case, i said nothing about communications, I said contractors did not understand the natrue of their customer's work or how their deliverables would actually be used by the customer's employees. I explicity did not say contractor personnel and government personnel had problems communicating with each other.
Nor did I mean to say the use of contrctors was a bad idea. Just the opposite. The government personnel involved did not possess the skills or the time to develop complex multi-million dollar IT systems. Nor do any organizations that hire contractors. The contractor acknolwedges that by employing specialists in ascertaining the customer's needs. The customer expresses those needs in terms the customers understands, and it is the contractor's responsibility to translate those expressions into engineering requirements that result in the creation of deliverables that do what the customer wants them to do.
All this is self-evidently logical. One doesn't blame the homeowner if the house designed by the architect doesn't do what the homeowner told the architect it should do.
I'm not blaming outsiders. The contractors were inside and they were planners. That's what they were paid to do: Listen to what we say we need and go off and plan, design and deliver a system that does just that.
In my experience, many techs are happiest in a world ruled by the engineering principles they apply in their work. That's why they like their work and why they are good at it. But people do not behave according ot engineering principles. They change their minds. They have budget problems. They have superiors who direct them to make changes in otherwise admirable programs. I've found that techs, particularly journeymen non-managerial techs, often have difficulty dealing with that world and come off as abrasive, arrogant and incooperative. They fail to live by the truism that the customer is always right. To give a specific example, I can't begin to count the times some low-level coder told me something could not be changed, only to see it changed quickly once I went over his head.
Again, I have not been describing a communication problem. Communciations were excellent. I am describing the contractors' failure to deliver products that did what their customers said they wanted them to do. If, in fact, the contractor had problems understanding the ogvernment, it was the cntractors' responsibility to know that and to do something about. Money flowed from the government to the contractor, and responsiblity flowed the other way.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"